With QuakeCon 2025 coming tomorrow, I want to start off my first Tumblr post with thoughts on a possible Quake III remaster that has been teased.

Backtracking to QuakeCon 2021, Nightdive Studios surprised us with a remaster of the first Quake from June 22, 1996. This also sparked a somewhat active multiplayer player base for quite a while thanks to it's convenient way of hosting and joining lobbies (with Microsoft's PlayFab doing a good chunk of the work) but I will note that it had some rough ends at first but some would be patched out for a while as well.

Because this is developed by none other than Nightdive Studios, the ones who have remastered Doom + Doom II previously, what does the remaster offer?

While we didn't get anything major (like a new game or remaster) following QuakeCon 2022, we did receive a major update to the first Quake bringing in things such as Threewave CTF. However by that point the multiplayer activity was starting to wear off, which is to be expected at times.

Some would point out, why play this when you can play on a QuakeWorld client? (EzQuake being the most popular choice)

At the same time, this was apparently one of the better ways to play NetQuake thanks to the implementation of client-side prediction, which was something that while QuakeWorld had, NetQuake originally lacked. But I've heard that these two sides of Quake multiplayer have their own player bases, with QuakeWorld being most active in Europe and most North Americans still playing on NetQuake.

Client-side movement prediction is important to many (especially during the early days when most of the players were playing on 33.6Kbps dial-up modems) hence why QuakeWorld became more popular. Granted a more optimized way of playing NetQuake could've been on MPlayer.com but I can't really confirm too much of this since I wasn't around during it's active days and I was born months before MPlayer was eventually merged with the then-new GameSpy Arcade. (They acquired MPath/HearMe towards the end of 2000)

With that out of the way, the remaster for the original Quake somehow felt better to play on in comparison to regular NetQuake since all it takes is having higher than sub-100 ping to completely struggle against people who would have a low ping advantage.

Sadly, it suffers from a lack of proper addon support for multiplayer. NetQuake lacked downloading support which meant the remaster lacked it as well since it was based on that and the remaster only had a limited-set of addons accessible to both PC and console players. After awhile, me and my friend group just stuck back to QuakeWorld for our Quake multiplayer activity.

QuakeCon 2023 would lead to the release of a remaster for Quake II, which not only adds the same convenience as the first Quake in starting up multiplayer lobbies but also overhauls the core gameplay experience with faster weapon switching and all that.

While it didn't bring in official mod support, map downloading was still possible based on my experience. I don't usually play Quake II multiplayer as often compared to QuakeWorld but it's still worth checking out.

On the lead up to QuakeCon 2024, me and the group were expecting a Quake III Remaster to come out next. What wasn't expected was a new remaster for Classic Doom (Doom, Doom II, Final Doom, etc) to come out.

The best part that got me hooked on launch was the ability to not only play custom addons but also upload them for easier access. This was something that the previous id Software remasters lacked and it was big news (good and bad)

The good was you could even bring console players on board for DWANGO5.WAD without the worry of modding the console to gain such access.

The bad was it led to a boatload of low-quality uploads at launch. People uploaded tons of copies of mods that would've never worked on the remaster like Brutal Doom and MyHouse.wad (both of which are mods meant to be played on source ports like GZDoom) and some even going as far as to upload the IWAD of commerical games based on the Doom Engine. Like Heretic and Hexen! both of these games developed by Raven Software which are now Microsoft property following their acquisition of Activision Blizzard. With both ZeniMax and Activision being on the same roof as the multi Trillion-dollar corporation, I could imagine this not sitting well.

Custom multiplayer content wasn't playable at launch but was soon added in thankfully. Though it is best done as a public lobby since joining via room code doesn't appear to redirect users to the addon if they didn't subscribe to it already.

Now as we enter the start of QuakeCon 2025 on August 7th, it has led to speculation on a possible Quake III remaster to come out. There were also some speculations on other things like a potential remaster for Heretic and Hexen as well but we don't know for sure if or when it would happen.

I think a Quake III Remaster from Nightdive would be interesting to see and could see some potential for a "revival" of the Arena FPS subgenre.. Honestly at most, I kind of dislike using the word "revival" because it's been done to death so many times with barely any longevity to keep that fire. It's been done so many time with games like Reflex Arena and even Diabotical starting out well but then completely fading into obscurity later on.

Part of it also might be because it plays too-much like Quake III and maybe QuakeWorld to some extent since there is a Quake III mod called CPMA that adds in that movement style. Some would think 'If I want to play a game like Quake III, I would go play Quake III' and that could play a factor into these failed attempts at reviving a otherwise niche genre of FPS games. I say that because we now live in a world where the most popular multiplayer games are more about default dancing as Travis Scott in a shrinking dome and teabagging Nicki Minaj in Call of Duty.

Another common issue with modern arena shooter revivals (same can apply to modern multiplayer games in general) is how they were designed for eSports in mind which mostly kills the casual aspect of multiplayer. It starts to feel less fun as a casual player and it gets worse when you are subject to the toxicity of competitive players.

Anyway a Quake III remaster was almost unlikely since the release of Quake Live.

Once started as a free (ad-supported) web-based version of Quake III, it was how I managed to introduce a few people to Quake during my Junior High days. However activity declined due to a variety of reasons, and the move to Steam as a paid game further dwindled it more.

Quake Live was last updated in June 2016 so it's safe to say that Quake Live isn't really worth playing as a casual. A remaster of Quake III would serve as a fresh start if it were to happen.

Now one thing I hope would be included would be the inclusion of multiplayer addon support (similar to that of Doom + Doom II) as that could increase more longevity for a game like Quake III even. It makes more sense because the multiplayer scene is built on that from the get go. More famous maps like Aerowalk and Blood Run wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the community and the people of id releasing tools and later source codes to the games themselves.

You could play on the same levels for so long before you just feel like wanting to play something else. In my case, I moved back to the original QuakeWorld and I mostly play source ports of Quake II for my activity but every now and then, I fire up Quake II remaster for my multiplayer fix.

One more thing I would like to see for a potential remaster is the inclusion of content from the Playstation 2 port called, Quake III Revolution.

This console port was developed by none of than Bullfrog Productions, a British game developer responsible for games like Populous, Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper. The fact that a developer who only made god games and strategy games went on to port a FPS developed by id is kind of crazy. But unfortunately this was around the time when Peter Molyneux left the company in 1997 and was later absorbed by Electronic Arts as "EA UK".

What was different between the Playstation 2 port compared to the PC version was the single player campaign. While you were limited to a set of characters (Sarge, Anarki, Doom, Klesk, and Daemia), you could upgrade your character the further you progressed and would see changes to the appearences.

Nowadays, the only way to play this (on PC) would be through emulation via PCSX2 but not everyone wants to setup an emulator just to play a game that was originally meant for PC (unless you are nostalgic or just curious) so the inclusion of Revolution onto a remaster would be a nice touch, especially since Quake and Quake II had their Nintendo 64 content added in to the remasters as well.

Anyway I'm going to conclude this for now, I do expect to write another post following QuakeCon. Stay tuned! ^-^